Thursday, November 27, 2008

Thanks to David Heatley from Cycling-Inform for this excellent tip. At Cycling-Inform they can help you set out a training plan that can incorporate where you are at in your cycling career with specific attention to the style of riding and racing you intend to do. It can be done remotely and is specifically geared for a busy cyclist that has to fit their training around family and work commitments.

Cyclists frequently face situations where coming into the last closing kilometers of the race they are outnumbers by far better sprinters. It’s the scenario of a the little climber coming into the final lap of a criterium with a bunch of burly sprinters, or the big guy trying to figure out what to do a few kilometers out from an uphill finish. The best way to improve your chance of winning is to look for an opportunity to attack at a time that doesn’t suit the other riders around you. If you’re with sprinters, go early. They won’t want to waste their sprinting power chasing you so they’re likely to look around to see who else will go after you. If they wait too long, you win.

For the big guys trying to win uphill finishes, use your power advantage on flat ground before the climb to push the little climbers over their limits. Keep attacking them, because they know they’re only hope is to stay with you until the climb, where the advantage shifts to them. But if you break them before they even get to the hill, you’ll have a time gap to exploit and hopefully they’ll be so spent that being lighter isn’t enough to help them beat you.

What if you are not an extremely fast sprinter? The best plan get to get to the line with as fewer riders as possible. The least people to content with in sprint to the finish line the better. But it’s still almost as difficult as winning a bunch sprint as winning from a small breakaway group. Even though your competition is much reduced in number, you're still going to need a rapid jump and nerves of steel to play out the final few kilometers of the race. No sense in getting to the finish after managing a wicked breakaway only to not have a plan for the sprint and end up being beaten by the handful of riders you broke away with.

Whether you're part of a small breakaway or part of the bunch your ideal scenario is one where you get to contest the finish alone and that means dropping all the other riders that you are with. This will be hard if you're still in the bunch as it speeds to the finish because the pace will likely be extremely high! Winning a race like this can be done though. What you need to be able to do is to hold an extremely high speed for over a kilometre and then launch your winning attack.

Your goal of course when beginning your attack is to go like a bullet so that no one has the chance to hold your wheel and draft you. Make your move as smoothly as possible to disguise your speed as much as you can. You'll need a little luck on your side as well.